Which Rubens Are at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota
The interior sculpture garden at the Ringling Museum of Art
This fine art museum junkie paused in his contempo tour of major league baseball stadiums in the Southward (run into this post) to visit what was a brand-new museum for him: the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. This was, in fact, the beginning time we had ever been to Florida at all.
Nosotros were delighted to acquire that the man after whom the museum is named endemic the Ringling Bros. Circus. Sarasota was the circus's winter home, which is why John Ringling built his home there. He called his mansion "Ca d'Zan," which of class reminded us of Citizen Kane and "Xanadu". Information technology was included with our access, but nosotros didn't have fourth dimension to see it.
The Ringling Museum of Art is but one of several fine structures on a big campus, all of which is (nosotros were told by the loquacious ticket-seller) now owned by the Country of Florida and managed by Florida State University. Several buildings are devoted to circus history and circus artifacts, including Ringling'due south private railway car, 
which is currently being restored in full view of visitors. (The railway auto (above) is in the edifice pictured to the correct; a friendly restorer working on the trim in the ascertainment room seemed happy to talk to the states most it when we stuck in our heads.) This is surely the but place in the world where ane tin view masterpieces of art in proximity to circus memorabilia.
The side of the art museum building is visible beyond the bridge.
A lot of retirees in Sarasota seem to have volunteered at the Ringling Museum. At whatsoever rate, we ran into them everywhere — grin, cordial, and helpful, usually without waiting to exist asked. After seeing the circus memorabilia, we establish our manner through the gardens and across the swimming to the art museum building, which, we learned, was designed to resemble the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Information technology's been open up since 1931.
At the left in this gallery are portraits of Austrian Emperor Francis I and his wife, the Empress Maria-Theresa, painted around 1750 by the Swedish artist Martin van Meytens II
This building holds John Ringling's personal fine art drove, as bequeathed to the museum, with a few additions over the years. We couldn't aid wondering whether Ringling personally sought out and selected works of fine art for his collection, or whether he relied on fine art advisors. In any instance, he assembled a remarkably large drove.
We couldn't help drawing a dissimilarity with the Frick Drove, in New York Metropolis, which contains the art collection of the belatedly Pittsburgh industrialist, and with which nosotros are on intimate terms. Similar Mr. Ringling, Mr. Frick concentrated well-nigh entirely on the former masters. Our understanding is that Mr. Frick was very much a hands-on collector with definite tastes and affinities, who acquired new paintings very deliberately and did not keep works that did non requite him lasting pleasance and satisfaction. A regular visitor to the Frick Collection feels that he has come to know Mr. Frick through his tastes in art.
But i doesn't go the same sense at the Ringling Museum. The drove is much larger, of course. Only information technology also seems more indiscriminate, 
equally if Mr. Ringling had simply commissioned someone to collect as many of the old masters as possible. For us, Mr. Ringling's personality didn't emerge from his drove.
Still, the Ringling has a peachy deal of marvelous fine art that is well worth going out of one's mode to see. Among the most striking are a number of major works by Peter Paul Rubens. The Ringling Museum not only has several very fine paintings of normal size by Rubens, like "The Departure of Lot and His Family 
from Sodom" (above), but also, in a large special gallery, a set up of half a dozen enormous canvases on Biblical themes collectively entitled "The Triumph of the Eucharist." These deserved much more than time than we had to spend.
Mr. Frick did not collect Rubens at all — in fact, he and Mr. Ringling didn't collect many of the same artists. Both collectors acquired notable portraits of Rex Philip Iv of Kingdom of spain by Velasquez, merely while Mr. Frick never obtained a Poussin, Mr. Ringling caused two. 
The collection includes quite a few paintings by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French and Italian artists that we did non know, non all of which seemed peculiarly interesting. But nosotros enjoyed first-rate works by Cranach the Elder, El Greco, Murillo, Veronese, Henry Raeburn, and Joseph Wright of Derby, and we peculiarly liked a painting past Anton Raphael Mengs entitled "The Dream of Joseph."
The Ringling Museum has a few European and American paintings from the nineteenth century and the starting time part of the twentieth. Mr. Ringling clearly had no interest in abstruse art or in fine art of his own 
country. But the Ringling Museum does have a major early work by one of our favorite American artists, the regionalist Reginald Marsh, entitled "Wonderland Circus, Sideshow Coney Island 1930." No uncertainty Mr. Ringling the circus man was attracted by the painting's theme.
After coming home, we found an article on the cyberspace in the Saint petersburg Times suggesting that the Ringling Museum is experiencing funding difficulties because of the State of Florida (and FSU's) fiscal problems. The museum seems to be well managed, well attended, and well supported past the locals; it's cool that anyone should think of closing it.
Source: https://emsworth.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/rubens-and-the-old-masters-at-the-ringling-museum-of-art-in-sarasota/
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